College Regents Seeking $75.6 Million Over Two Years For New Programs

The state's largest public college system is likely to ask for $75.6 million more in the next two years

A $75.6 million proposal to bolster security, start a new scholarship program, and strengthen academic advising in the state's largest college and university system over the next two fiscal years was endorsed Tuesday by the finance committee of the Board of Regents for Higher Education.

The proposal, which will go to the full Board of Regents on Oct. 16, also includes plans to expand programs for veterans and opportunities for high school students to have "early college" experiences, as well as to extend educational programs for students not yet ready for college-level work.

The recommendation comes a month after the board — which oversees the state's four state universities, 12 community colleges and the online Charter Oak State College — approved a proposal to request a 9.9 percent boost in state funding, or $60.3 million, for 2015-16.

The proposal considered Tuesday is part of a package of budget expansion options for fiscal years 2016 and 2017, some of which are part of "Transform CSCU 2020" — the state's plan to improve the Connecticut State College and Universities system. The system includes all of the state's public colleges, except the University of Connecticut.

Asked whether he thinks the state Office of Policy and Management and legislators will be receptive to a request for more funding in what is likely to be a tight budget year, Matt Fleury, chairman of the finance committee, said, "I think we conduct our business here with a fair amount of appreciation for the context. … One driving imperative in our minds is what can we do to better serve our students?"

Fleury said he thinks that state officials and legislators will appreciate that "these requests are about trying to do the right thing. … Everybody appreciates that the first step in the process is to lay out what we think is a responsible request in the interests of those we are serving at our campuses and to recognize that ... there's a process to go through."

Fleury added: "In this environment, I don't think a lot of requests go through without some level of scrutiny and potentially some compromise. We're accustomed to that."

The proposal to strengthen security involves spending $2.43 million in fiscal years 2016 and 2017 to hire a senior executive to oversee the systemwide security program, as well as heads of security for seven community colleges that don't have them.

Erika H. Steiner, the regents' chief financial officer, said that while the state's four regional universities do have dedicated police forces patrolling the campuses, the community colleges have a wide range of approaches to security.

"Some of our colleges have very good security…" Steiner said. "Those are not included in this request."

The regents scholarship program calls for $6 million in fiscal year 2016 and $15 million in fiscal year 2017 that would be used to start a scholarship program that would eventually rely upon a private fundraising campaign to develop an endowment.

Steiner said that the scholarship program would make awards of about $1,500 — although the final number is yet to be determined — to community college graduates who earn their associate's degree and choose to continue their education at one of the four state universities in the CSCU system.

Steiner said the proposal is the result of research that asked students if they were given "some kind of a scholarship, would that entice you to stay in the system? The results of that survey were convincing enough …"

The proposal also calls for an investment of $14.3 million into boosting academic advising over the next two fiscal years, which Steiner said is "significantly undermanned."

Although the national ratio of students to advisers is 233-to-1, on average, that ratio gets as high as one adviser to several thousand students in the state system.

Better advising is "one of the most important investments we could possibly make to retain students and to encourage them to graduate out of the system," Steiner said.

The proposal includes $23.4 million over two years to continue developmental education programs for students who are not ready for college-level work. It also includes almost $8 million to expand "early college" programs that enable high school students to earn college credit and take other steps to ensure that high school graduates are prepared for college and/or a career.

The plan also includes $5.5 million over the next two years to expand counseling, support and financial aid for veterans.